Liar Crescent
by PumpkinPancakes
Summary: Apologies.


Paula sat at the edge of her bed; shoulders crumpled and worn, hanging from their joints, shrouded always in the pink floral pattern of her nightgown. She stared ever forward with the tight lips and unfocused eyes that, for these last years of her life, had become her permanent face. She gripped endlessly at her knees; tensing and stuttering over and over and again.

The sun was slowly invading the cramped and undusted reaches of her bedroom and she finally dared to stand up and attempt a step into this unfamiliar territory. Her bones cried out like breaking wood.

Without thought she straightened the bed with a halting but forceful jolt through the sheets; she ran her hand over the fabric roughly and her palm became a canvas of smeared, greasy gray residue. She pulled open the long drapes and stared out into the trees below her window lustfully, her numb fingertips clawing at the glass with a small squeal. She could not kneel so she rest her spotted forehead against the wall and clasped her hands in prayer. A cloud sunk in between her window and the sun, muting the already dull colors of the small bedroom.

She fumbled through her dresser and slowly drew out a framed photo of her deceased husband; ran her hand along the black cardboard backing, considered opening it but instead pressed her wrinkled lips to the glass and obscured his messy black hair. She placed it back in the drawer, face down, and carefully slid it back into its place. Her cloudy eyes shuddered for a moment, bulged against their lids and she massaged the bridge of her nose, pinching the bridges and drawing up the skin, then letting the loose skin fall back into its wayward cascade.

For a short moment she clutched at her chest and her breathing slowed, but then it too faded away and she was back. She set out into the hallway, not bothering to search for the light switch, instinctively marching forward into the kitchen. As she moved her hands trailed over every surface: the indecipherable brail of the hallway, the brittle, ancient vinyl of the refrigerator, the cold grime of the counter top and through the icy abyss of the metal sink basin.

She stopped at the small window above the sink and her body grew to peer out of it. Her eyes searched and after a brief hunt she seemed to find something interesting, whispering, "Well, what is this?" but instead making the noise of her loose vocal chords rattling and clashing with each other sloppily. A dull and brief rumble.

She remained there, hands relentlessly rubbing the faucet, the fake glass knobs, over each other and then recoiling at the feeling of their own sand papered and perverse existence. The soft light that filtered through the tiny glass fixture sank through into her shallow creases, her bruised cheeks, and echoes, helplessly, in the scar tissue that cradled her unreflective pupils. But, her fascination and focus escaped her and she let her back regress into its knotted hunch. Her shoulders fell back into their sagging ache; her fingers burning from their frenzied activity.

The ring of a telephone tumbled in from the silent hum that filled her small apartment. She methodically paced her steps into the living room, where several boxes lay opened, their intestinal contents spilled out across the floor. She reached for the phone and coughed loudly for her own sake before answering in a timid whisper, some trace of fear lining her query, "Hello?"

"Mom," the voice spoke loudly, with the air of a habitually raised tone.

"It's my darling," Paula more recited than meant, but with no retention of the special attention that a parent will exert onto a child, "hello Shara."

"Hi mom, I was going to come over again today,"

"Oh, that would be lovely, let me first get changed and start some tea, or coffee, do you drink coffee?" She glanced back at the kitchen but only caught the familiar haze.

"No, you don't need to do that, really, I just wanted to come look through dad's things again, have you found his tax records for last year?"

"Hmm? You'll have to speak up darling, I can't quite hear what you are saying," Paula felt the phone base with her hand for a second and considered pretending to disconnect the cable.

"Please, mom, I need you to help me find-" but Paula unsteadily clamored for a term, "I think that you may be breaking up, are you on your cell phone darling? I really can't make out what you are saying."

"Mom..." Shara sighed impatiently and raised her voice a small bit, "I'm gonna come over, okay? You can get back in bed if you want to, I'm just gonna look for dad's records."

"I can't hear you... dear... I'm going to hang up now, goodbye, talk to you tomorrow," And Paula let her hovering finger fall on the disconnect switch.

She picked up a few things from the floor and set them back in and on top of one of the boxes, but her back stung her and she stood for a moment stuck in a half-stoop before she struggled back up and felt her dried out spinal cord rattle angrily against her internal organs. She made her way back through the dark hallway and pulled the already cracked bathroom door back, its pale yellow light spilled out onto her face and arms. She let the water run in both the bathtub and the sink, pulled her pink night dress down around her shoulders and closed her eyes as it fell to the floor, scraping her delicate paper skin and kicking up cold air about her ankles. She stepped out of it and examined herself in the mirror, but was visually unrewarded. She leaned closer and the white scrub lands of brittle and unwieldy hair came into focus. She desperately clawed at it until it lay flat over her ears, rouge hairs splitting away from the whole and settling defiantly, hanging parallel to her defeated shoulder line. She cupped her cheeks and stared back at the pink-white glaze of her sunken eyes. She picked at her eyelids, pulled at her excess stomach and felt the ribs caging off her flat and shriveled chest.

She sat down at the edge of the steaming bathtub and reached for the water below. She sunk then a foot and the cold porcelain of the edge alarmed her inner thigh, so she half slid into the shallow water backwards. Her neck rest sideways on the opposite side and her leg caught up on the faucet on it's way over from the floor. She could not twist to escape it, and so carefully sat up and ignored the outcry from her hips, unstuck her leg and then let her back slip under the shallow water's surface.

She let it fill in around her, not quite heating her ice filled stomach, but delaying the sick, nauseas pain for another few minutes and allowing her to close her eyes in what was as close to sleep as she could hope to gather, but the water quickly lost its warmth and she shivered painfully. She, in hopelessly halting movement, stepped out of the tub and walked naked into the hall.

She considered the layout of the apartment and decided to press her hands against the wall, to keep steady, and half-limp down towards her daughter's bedroom. She pressed on the door and turned the doorknob until is slid open with a dusty breath, the pastel green wallpaper reflected brilliantly against itself and the hue multiplied out over Paula's lingering hand on the door. The scene was preserved as it had been four years ago, when Shara has left for college and never returned to live there again. An array of stuffed bears lay in an organized heap around and within the pillows, some well weathered and with bits of loose fluff spilling from between their fur-hidden seams. They all stared forward, at the closet and desk beside it, harboring Shara's old notebooks and scrapbooks, her hangers holding nothing inside of the open closet's modest space.

Paula sat on the edge of the bed, then fell back on it with a groan. She placed her hand on a small bear and drew it near. She stared at it's button eyes and felt the wisps of air exhuming from her lungs catch in her throat. She coughed and the bear's fur flitted like grass under a summer breeze. She curled up and held the bear at her neckline, coughing fitfully as her heart began to race. She, with her free hand, dug her nails into her chest and began to feel mucus fill her sagging cheek. She sprawled out and clenched the bear tightly and after a minute of bone cracking shouts, she let her hand go limp and the small thing rolled away from her.

As she regained her strength she felt it, a fire from within her hips, which grew and punctured her lungs with its raging flow, so she cried out hoarsely, "Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck!"

"What the fuck is this? What the fuck, please, just fucking stop, mother and god, just fucking stop this. Why can't I just go now... why is this happening to me?" Her dry tear ducts flexed and bit into her eye but could produce no lubricant.

"god, fuck you, fuck you, please just stop this and come back to me, or let me die, for the love of fucking god, just kill me, I don't even want to live anymore, so just stop this now..." her fingertips slipped over the small drops of blood that they had extracted from her chest.

"god, I hate you so much."

She trembled and in her intense, pulsing pain she curled up on the bed.

Shara entered with her copy of the key and flipped the light switch on, hurrying to set down the small briefcase she had bought to keep all of her father's records in, then pulling off her gloves and scarf, then jacket and turning on the small space heater that was tucked away in the small alcove beneath a high legged dining table, She heard a small splashing from the hallway and pulled open the bathroom door to find a small pool of water steadily expanding outwards from beneath the bathtub. she calmly turned the water off both at the tub and in the sink, which was harmlessly filling out through the rim holes, then began to soak up the water with towels from the hamper just opposite the sink.

She tossed the wet terrycloth into the bathtub momentarily and then continued to her mother's room, which was empty, "Mom?" she looked back out into the kitchen and living room, then spotted her old bedroom's door standing ajar.

She pushed it in and spotted her mother laying naked across the bedsheets, a dark ring of water emanating out around her bony figure. She pulled the blankets around her and sat down next to her, sighing, "Oh mom, really."

Paula pulled the blankets towards her neck but her frail fingers slipped away with nothing in them, she kept her eyes closed and coughed lightly, for show and rolled onto her back, knees bending and popping on the edge of the mattress. Shara scooped her up, gently, and with her arm around Paula's shoulders Shara led her back into the living room and set her down on the couch, speaking loudly in what she knew was her good ear, "Don't go anywhere, okay?"

"I won't."


End file.
